Hello! I’ve been delving into the meanings of songs lately as an attempt to learn new things about Japanese, and I have a couple questions. First, the song I’m studying right now is called Kawaikute gomen. When I went online to search for the meaning of kute, all I’m getting is that it means “and” when connecting two i adjectives. For example, このセットは美味しくて安いです。However, the title of the song translates to “sorry for being cute,” which I don’t understand the usage of kute in such instance and would like explanation. Second, in the first line of the lyrics, it says 「私が私のことを愛して」which is translated to “I love myself.” If that is the case, why is it using the てform and not just use 愛する？
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1) 「て」 has many functions.
As you noted, it can mean ‘and’, so 美味しくて安い means “delicious and cheap”.
In かわいくてごめん, it has the meaning of 順接(じゅんせつ), literally something like “forward conjunction”, which corresponds to English “because/therefore/thus”. かわいくてごめん(なさい) thus literally means “Because I’m cute, please forgive me”, which when accounting for tone of speech and putting in more idiomatic English is “Sorry for being cute”.
1a) You might wonder “can 美味しくて安い then mean ‘Because it is tasty, it is cheap.’?” Technically it can, but as you can tell it might not make much sense meaning-wise. You need to rely on context. Some expressions make more sense, like 「寂(さび)しくて悲(かな)しい」could both mean “I am lonely and sad,” or “I am lonely, therefore I am sad.”
1b) Technically, the く in くて belongs to the adjective かわいい. The actual grammar structure is かわいい→かわいく→かわいく+て.
1c) If you happen to know Korean, て would be sort of equivalent to (아/어)서.
2) 私が私のことを愛して is only half of the sentence. The full sentence is 「私が私のことを愛して**何が悪いの？**」. In this case the て functions as the “and”, so the translation is like “I love myself, and, what is wrong with that?”